Ayse Birsen Otyakmaz
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Qualification:
Birsen was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkiye but her family and most of her ancestors are coming from a little village in north of Sivas, an Anatolian city with infamous cold winters. She completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at Bogazici University in Istanbul. She had the opportunity to study abroad for a semester via Erasmus+ at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and she loved it there. During this time, she was able to contribute to a project in Dr Zareen Abbas group, which focused on Hofmeister effects in silica nanoparticles in mixed solutions. However, together with horrible cramming for the exams at Bogazici, she realized that physical chemistry was not something for her, so she decided to have build a career on medicinal chemistry. She completed her MSc. in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Gothenburg in 2022 under the supervision of Dr Alesia Tietze, working on site-specific thioether conjugation of small peptides in ionic liquid media. In October 2023, she joined the Burley group to pursue her PhD in the development of a chemical biological platform to interrogate the mechanisms of anti-cancer activity of splice-switching small molecules.
Birsen was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkiye but her family and most of her ancestors are coming from a little village in north of Sivas, an Anatolian city with infamous cold winters. She completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at Bogazici University in Istanbul. She had the opportunity to study abroad for a semester via Erasmus+ at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and she loved it there. During this time, she was able to contribute to a project in Dr Zareen Abbas group, which focused on Hofmeister effects in silica nanoparticles in mixed solutions. However, together with horrible cramming for the exams at Bogazici, she realized that physical chemistry was not something for her, so she decided to have build a career on medicinal chemistry. She completed her MSc. in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Gothenburg in 2022 under the supervision of Dr Alesia Tietze, working on site-specific thioether conjugation of small peptides in ionic liquid media. In October 2023, she joined the Burley group to pursue her PhD in the development of a chemical biological platform to interrogate the mechanisms of anti-cancer activity of splice-switching small molecules.
Current position:
Birsen loves to exercise (mostly running and skiing), travel and read all sorts of novels that would pull her away from reality. She can be easily sucked into fandom, she has enough geeky knowledge about MCU, The Office, Friends, and Game of Thrones/ISOIAF. She also loves to sing when no one’s listening. She also happen to have more hair than Ryan.
